On this week’s pod, we discuss the megatrend of an ageing population and some of the investing opportunities (and risks) this trend creates in society.
- The average human life expectancy has increased by 10 years since 2000 to almost 73 – modern medical technology, pharmaceuticals, and standards of care mean we’re all living longer healthier lives. At the same time, birth rates are declining. If these trends continue, most countries are projected to have shrinking populations by the end of the century, with some countries expecting their populations to halve by 2100!
- A longer life expectancy is great for the individual but may mean that younger generations will have to contribute more to support older ones, or that people will have to work longer and retire later. Key challenges such as funding for healthcare and social care for the elderly need to be tackled by governments, supported by private industry
- It’s a fact of life that we are more susceptible to ailments as we get older. A healthy lifestyle can only reduce the chances of serious illnesses, not eliminate them completely. Preventative and proactive healthcare solutions can help to mitigate the conditions that occur more frequently in later years, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Companies such as Teladoc, Alphabet and Apple are delivering technology to assist with health monitoring, and enable preventative healthcare
- A larger retired population will increase the demand for cost-effective and also luxury travel and entertainment. Those leading longer and healthier lives will want to enjoy themselves in their golden years, and this will create a greater need for social hubs and activities for retirees
- Calico, a ‘moonshot’ subsidiary of Alphabet, are a research lab with the goal of combating ageing and associated diseases. They’re partnering with other research labs and companies to deliver healthcare solutions, and in 2020 announced a drug for treating solid tumours
- Alphabet also has Verily Life Sciences (formerly Google Life Sciences), a research organisation devoted to the study of life sciences with the aim of digitising healthcare with research programs in digital surgery, pathology and immunology
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Transcript
Albert: Hi, this is Albert.
Luke: And this is Luke.
Albert: Today is Monday the 21st of June.
Luke: Welcome to the Telescope Investing podcast
Intro
Albert: Last week, a friend and listener of the show Renee, sent us a news article. The news article was about how there’s been a surge in spending by the older consumers after the pandemic on things like elective surgeries, vacations, and luxury goods, and she asked us why isn’t an ageing population one of our megatrends? Well, the answer is it is and always has been. We just haven’t followed it particularly closely.
Luke: Yeah, Albert, when we started our megatrend thinking a couple of years ago, we had about 20 random megatrends, but we focused on the ones that we thought were the biggest investment opportunities when we did our model portfolios last year and this year. And for me, it just felt like ageing population didn’t make the cut, but it’s certainly becoming a more interesting space and interesting topic, and I’ve been thinking about this area. I guess none of us are getting younger.
Albert: Also, when we have megatrends such as autonomous vehicles, cloud computing, and virtual reality, thinking about ageing, it’s just not as fun and can be downright depressing, but I think it’s time we had a look at this megatrend more closely.
Luke: And I’m coming at this from two angles also. I’m thinking about my parents and the kind of things that they might want to have a longer, healthier life, but I’m also thinking about myself. How do I prolong my healthy years?
Albert: Well, you could stop by not curtailing them by excessive drinking.
Luke: Uh, yes, you did receive a very drunken video from me on Saturday night. We had a bottomless brunch with a couple of friends and brunch turned into 12 hours solid of drinking and several other meals. And I seem to remember I asked my friends, Mike and Hing if they had any advice on living a longer, healthier life for you. Did they give you any good advice on that drunken video we sent?
Albert: I barely understood what they were saying, Luke, because they were so drunk. I don’t think they added anything of value to the conversation.
Luke: I watched it on Sunday and my toes were curling.
Life expectancy
Albert: Well, let’s get stuck in and explain why do we think an ageing population is a megatrend? I think it boils down to two things that are happening in the world right now. Life expectancies are increasing and also birth rates are declining.
I remember seeing a chart on Twitter a few weeks ago. It’s a chart showing the global life expectancy over the last 120 years. The life expectancy was around 32 in 1900 rising to almost 72 in 2019. And the surprising thing about this chart is that it’s almost a straight line from the bottom-left to the top-right. I had always assumed that life expectancy jumped up after vaccines were introduced and then started to level off, but no, it’s still increasing and I was surprised to see that global life expectancy has increased by 10 years since the year 2000.
Luke: That’s a good observation, actually. You’re right. It is a straight line. I guess, as we live longer lives, we’re running into different limitations that we’re having to solve. Other kinds of conditions that always been part of the human condition, but if you only living to 32, you never got old enough to experience Alzheimer’s. There must be a ton of other conditions that will kick in as we start to hit older and older ages, more problems to solve.
Albert: We’re in our late forties which isn’t considered particularly old these days. It’s sobering to think, had we been born a hundred years earlier, statistically, we would be dead by now.
Luke: Yeah, we would be long dead. Life expectancy in 1900 was what? 32. That’s nuts.
Albert: How did anyone get anything done back then? Mind you, they didn’t have Facebook or Twitter back then.
Luke: Well, the interesting thing that I find looking at these graphs is while your straight-line graph gives me pause for thought but I had thought we were extending life at an increasing pace and it looks like we’ve increased the average human lifespan by 10 years over the last 20 years. So it kind of seems to me that we’ll logically reach a point where eventually we’re extending life by more than one year per year. In essence, I guess, that means we all start to get younger. So my strategy is really to try and catch that train.
Albert: But there’s nothing you can do about it, Luke. It’s all down to scientists and people like that developing new techniques to extend life. There’s nothing you can do personally except live healthily.
Better healthcare
Luke: Yeah, I mean, let’s get into live healthily on this podcast. It’d be interesting to talk about some of the things that do perhaps help preserve us a little bit longer.
Well, let’s get into that, Luke. One of the reasons why life expectancy is going up is because of advances in medical technology, like new pharmaceuticals and better standard of care. The sad truth is that there is a correlation between wealth and lifespan. A large part of that is access to expensive healthcare. Also, wealthy people have better living standards, better diets, less stress and higher personal safety. And I read one study that showed that being wealthy added nine more years of healthy life, and an important word there is ‘healthy’ because it’s not just lifespan, but it’s also the quality of life as we age.
Yeah, it’s a shame, I suppose, that rich people live longer, healthier lives, but at the same time, if people are ploughing money into life extension and better quality lives, well, that’s a rising tide that’s going to lift all boats. So at least everybody’s going to benefit even if the benefits are slightly unequal.
Albert: Yeah, it’s a tough choice if you have to decide between feeding yourself and getting medical treatment. And if I can get some advice, I would recommend getting personal health insurance if you can. Even though Hong Kong has a public health service and I have previously had health insurance through my employment, I do have basic personal medical insurance just in case because you can always lose your job and you don’t want your health insurance to stop as well.
Luke: Yeah, we’re lucky in the UK to have the NHS, it’s pretty robust, but if you can afford it, it’s reassuring to know that you might have private medical in place to support that as well.
Albert: And you mentioned it earlier, Luke, about how to stay healthier and prolong your life.
Luke: Our lifespan is broadly going to be dictated by two things, right? Nature and nurture. What were we born with and then what decisions do we make that might influence our lifestyle?
Albert: Well, speaking of nature, Luke, we’ve seen advances in genetic technology and that could be a pivotal moment for increasing life expectancy. With things like CRISPR-Cas9 technology, we are not able to edit our genes and eliminate diseases, but also we can change our genes to extend our lifespan. I read a study last week about how a group of scientists at the Institute of Zoology in China have used CRISPR-Cas9 to prolong the lives of mice by 25%, and also they were physically stronger.
Luke: That’s pretty awesome. Like, would you get a CRISPR jab if you could add 25 years to your life and have super strength?
Albert: As long as it didn’t turn me into a mouse, I probably would.
Luke: I don’t know, I’d take whiskers if I got super strength and 25 years! Those whiskers could be handy, man.
Albert: Yeah, I read once that gene editing basically gave humans the ability to control their own evolution. I don’t know about you, Luke, but that sounds both amazing and terrifying to me.
Luke: Yeah, totally agree and we’re right at the dawn of this technology, and it could lead to some wonderful, awesome, terrifying places. I’m not sure, honestly, I’ll get CRISPR’d right now. It’s pretty early technology, but there are real therapies today to help people with vision impairment and other life-changing conditions by using technologies like CRISPR.
Healthier lifestyles
Albert: And you also mentioned nurture, Luke, and I guess nurture is your lifestyle. How you live your life can also change how long you will live for. And it seems that another reason why people are living longer is that there’s increased understanding of the health effects of things like diet, exercise, and lifestyle. Basically, people are just getting smarter about their health.
Luke: You pulled some research on something called Blue Zones, and that called out a number of habits shared by the residents of three regions in the world, in the US, Italy, and Japan who have exceptionally long lives, and it identified a bunch of common factors between those populations. Take us through them, Albert.
Albert: Yeah, it was quite interesting. Blue Zones are these regions in the world where life expectancy is particularly high and they found some commonalities between these three regions in terms of the way people live. And I’ll just quickly go through them. Number one is to stay active. Two is to have a sense of purpose. Three is to have methods to relieve stress. Four is to restrict calories and there’s something called the 80% rule where people eat until they’re 80% full. Five is have a mostly plant-based diet where meat is eaten seldomly. Six is moderate alcohol intake. And that was surprising to me. I would have thought having no alcohol was healthier, but apparently having a moderate alcohol intake was more common.
Luke: I guess that links back to the one on relieving stress, right?
Albert: Number seven, belonging to a faith-based community. Eight is family care where elder relatives are cared for by family. And finally, nine, having social circles with healthy behaviours.
Luke: I totally buy eight out of nine of those. I think I might give a thumbs down to the faith-based community, but for me, that’s the social circles. How many of these nine do you practice daily, Albert?
Albert: Oh, I haven’t gone through that, Luke, but I think I follow most of them. Probably all of them except for the faith0-based community.
Luke: And maybe that 80% rule, perhaps I should apply that to my drinking. Drink until I’m 80% drunk and then stop.
Albert: Actually, I have a problem with that 80% rule. I tend to over-eat.
Luke: Well, my fingers are crossed that we’ll both have long, healthy, old ages and still be working on episode thousand of the podcast one day.
Albert: Fingers crossed. Yeah, I think in general, people are having healthier lifestyles. We’ve seen things like smoking becoming less popular in developed countries, but sadly, they are becoming more popular in developing countries. Alcohol probably causes more premature deaths as tobacco, but it’s just not as quick or as clear cut. But alcohol consumption is decreasing amongst younger generations, but this may not be health-related. And I read that millennials and gen Z-ers are drinking less alcohol than older generations in part because of fears related to losing control while drunk and having the evidence shared on Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook.
Luke: Uh, it makes sense. I was reading some Reddit horror stories just over the weekend of people who’d accidentally drunkenly sent their nudes to their public Snapchat group rather than to their significant other. I guess those drunk fingers could make life-changing decisions sometimes.
Albert: It seems that Facebook is causing young people to drink less, so that’s not bad, right?
Luke: Agree, an unexpected benefit.
Albert: Okay. There was an amusing story about Christiano Ronaldo last week. Did you see that, Luke, about how the market valuation of Coca-Cola dropped about $4 billion after Christiano Ronaldo snubbed them at a press conference?
Luke: Yeah, that’s great. Coca-Cola’s poison. He opted for water, right?
Albert: And he removed the Coca-Cola bottles from his table and basically gave them a very dismissive comment.
Luke: But Ronaldo’s a pretty healthy guy. I think that’s a wise health choice.
Albert: And interestingly, also last week he became the first person ever to reach a 300 million Instagram followers.
Decreasing birth rates
Luke: So we talked about one of the key factors being people living longer, but you’d said at the top of the podcast, birth rates are decreasing too.
Albert: Yeah, this was really interesting. Birth rates are lowering in many countries. I saw a chart recently. It showed the global fertility rate over the last 70 years or so. The fertility rate is the average number of children per woman in the world. And in 1950, the global fertility rate was around 4.7, but by 2017, this had dropped to about 2.4. And this needs to be 2.1 to maintain the population size.
Luke: That can’t be a bad thing. I remember reading the most environmentally friendly thing you can do for the planet is not to have kids.
Albert: Well, we also need to be able to maintain our population. And this is quite worrying because many countries, especially developed countries, have a fertility rate below 2.1 and they expect their population to be decreasing by the end of the century. The only region that is expected to grow substantially is Africa, which is expected to triple in size.
Luke: It makes sense from a socioeconomic perspective. To some extent, if you’re in a developing nation, you’re more dependent on your children and grandchildren to make provision for you when you get older and you can’t work, but in the developed world, we have things like social services and pensions and other structures to support us that reduces the imperative to have kids.
Albert: It’s all driven by more women in education and work and they are having fewer children as a result. Basically, women have found other things to do than churn out babies. And the reason why this is important is that it means that the elderly will make up an increasing proportion of the population. And this could mean that younger generations will have to contribute more to support older ones. It raises questions such as, who pays tax when most people are retired? Who’s going to be with the health care for the older generations? Who will look after them? And what will people do after they retire?
Mid-ep promo
Luke: That’s a great transition into some of the investment opportunities that an ageing population offers. But before we get there, I think that’s also a great prompt for a quick mid-episode promo for Telescope Investing.
Who looks after the elderly? Like, who really is going to look after you? You’ve got to look after yourself. People that invest and make provision for their own retirement are the ones who are going to be financially secure in later life. And we’re optimistic that the advice and the guidance and the stock recommendations, that Telescope Investing will help you with your own investment strategy.
Albert: Yeah, make sure your twilight years are spent in comfort by investing now instead of later.
More on birth rates
Albert: Actually, the declining birth rate is quite a worry for a lot of governments and they are starting to offer incentives to people to get married and to have children. For example, I read that in Japan, they are offering newly-weds 600,000 yen, which is around five and a half thousand US dollars, with the hope of boosting the country’s declining birth rate.
Luke: And even China have done something similar, right? They’ve moved away further and further from the one-child policy trying to help their own population grow.
Albert: Yeah, they stopped their one-child policy back in 2015 and started allowing couples to have two children, and just this year, they’re going to relax that even further and allow them to have three children. And I’ve seen rumours that China might even eliminate caps altogether by 2025.
But one amusing story that I’ve found in doing research for this podcast is that I saw that in Iceland, there are only 330,000 people there. And the number one dating rule in Iceland is make sure you’re not cousins. I suspect that one can scroll through all of Iceland’s Tinder over the weekend.
Luke: Have you tried? Because Icelandic girls are pretty hot.
Albert: I haven’t tried, Luke. I’ve deleted Tinder from my phone, just in case my girlfriend is listening.
Luke: And I guess every episode for the last year has been dominated by the pandemic and even this factors into these demographics around an ageing population. I thought I’d read some news that there was a baby boom coming as a result of the pandemic. Everyone was stuck at home with nothing better to do than to procreate, but actually, it turns out there were fewer babies born last year.
Albert: Yeah, it turned out that losing your job and dealing with a deadly pandemic was not conducive to having babies.
Luke: But the pandemic’s ending now. Maybe there will be a boom now because people have deferred that decision until happier times. A bit like the baby boom post-World War 2.
Albert: Yeah, you’re right, Luke. That could be entirely possible. And I think we talked about this in an earlier episode, how in 20 years’ time, one year very few people competing for jobs, and the next year there’ll be a lot of people competing for jobs as they come out of university.
Needs of an ageing population
Luke: Well, let’s transition this conversation into what does an ageing population need?
Albert: Yeah, it’s a sad fact of life that as you get older, you’re more susceptible to ailments, especially in diseases that tend to appear in older people, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. A healthy lifestyle can only reduce the chances of serious diseases like this, but it cannot eliminate them completely.
Luke: Well, I guess, as we mentioned earlier, there’s a connection between wealth and life expectancy. We’ve got some pretty advanced health care and life extension technologies now if you’re willing to pay for them. Things like cutting-edge drugs and treatment. For example, I recall a story about one of the Google founders, actually driving research on a condition that he has personally.
Albert: I also read a story about how some rich people in Silicon Valley or injecting themselves with young blood. Real-life vampires.
Luke: Yeah. How about cryogenics? What if you’ve got some condition now and you just want to freeze yourself for a couple of hundred years until that’s been solved? Would you stick your head in a freezer if you knew you only had a few years to live?
Albert: I don’t know, Luke. This sounds more like a scam than anything. I find it amusing that there are two levels of this. You can either freezer your entire body or just freeze your head with the assumption that [at] some point in the future, they can attach your head to a robotic body and that is how you are going to come back to life.
Luke: I’m not sure I’d want to be a Futurama head in a jar. I do like the idea of potentially living forever. There’s also some scary sci-fi outcomes of freezing your brain. Who knows what you’re going to be revived into.
Yeah, so we’re talking about what the older people need and I guess one of the core needs is shelter. You need sustainable and cost-effective housing and social care to look after you. Care homes are expensive and they could wipe out all the wealth you may have generated during your working life.
Albert: Yeah, it’s possible that nursing homes could see an increasing demand with an older population, but could there be alternatives for people who are still relatively healthy and mobile, such as social hubs for retirees?
Luke: Yeah, I like the idea of that. It’s a sad truth that your social circles going to decrease over time, I guess because your friends and relatives are dying around you if you’re outliving them. I’m not sure these things really exist today. It’s been a bit of a dream of mine to create a bit of a social hub for my friends, perhaps a luxurious beach resort where you, I, our close friends, and maybe a future winner of a Telescope Investing giveaway can all the spend, uh, can all spend a happy retirement on a beach living in luxury.
Albert: Are you sure that’s a prize people want to win? But Luke, isn’t that basically Florida, where retirees go to enjoy themselves? Maybe we just need mini-Floridas around the world so you don’t have to deal with alligators and snakes.
Luke: If alligators and snakes are my biggest concern when I get to that, doing pretty well. I think.
Albert: I don’t know. Alligators and snakes could shorten your lifespan quite quickly.
Luke: Not living in London, they won’t.
Albert: And I guess we’re seeing traditional family support systems declining due to societal changes, and also because people are having less children. You would expect one benefit of having children is that they will look after you when you get older.
Luke: Maybe in Asia and in the East but not really in the West. I’ve got a sense we’re more predisposed to bundling our elders into care homes and outsourcing the help.
Albert: And I guess this links back to the article that Renee sent us. As people live longer and have longer and healthier lives, they will want to enjoy themselves. A lifetime of saving and investing can leave some people with a sizeable nest egg to fund their retirement.
Luke: Sadly, while others were not able to plan as well financially.
Albert: I remember reading a while back that cruises were becoming more and more popular over the last 20 years or so. And the popularity was only stopped by the coronavirus. I’m not sure how long it will take, but I’m sure cruises will gain their popularity again.
Luke: Cruising doesn’t appeal to me, but maybe it will when I’m no longer able to board a plane comfortably and travel country to country to see the world.
Albert: Didn’t we have plans to go on a poker cruise once?
Luke: I wanted to, you seemed reticent.
Albert: Constantly playing poker and eating buffet meals doesn’t sound that fun to me.
Luke: At least there are no snakes or alligators.
Albert: This reminds me. I think we mentioned a few weeks ago that Hong Kong is having lotteries for vaccinated people to boost vaccination rates, and I read recently that a company called Dream Cruises is holding a lottery where the first prize is an all-you-can-cruise annual pass, where you can spend as much time as you want on a cruise over the next year. I don’t know, Luke, I think I’ll pass on this one.
Luke: Yeah, every time I’ve read about a cruise company coming out post-pandemic, suddenly the next week you see a story that all of their crew have gone down with COVID. I don’t think cruises are safe just yet. So the cruise industry’s probably not the right investment right now, but if you did want to invest in an ageing population, give us some investment ideas, Albert.
Investment opportunities
Albert: Well, as you can imagine, the impacts of an ageing population will be huge and cover a wide range of industries and businesses, but we did have a look at some related to the areas of life extension and healthcare. And when we first identified an ageing population as a megatrend, we looked at a company called Calico. It’s not a standalone company. It’s actually a subsidiary of Alphabet, the owner of Google, and Calico is a research lab in partnership with AbbVie with a goal of combating ageing and associated diseases.
Luke: Yeah, Calico is one of Alphabet’s moonshot companies. They’re using their funding and their smart people to partner with other companies driving life extension.
Albert: But not much news has come out of Calico apart from some news last year about a new drug for treating solid tumours. I don’t think that Calico will ever be a standalone business. They’re more of a research lab. Remember we covered AlphaFold? Using AI to predict how proteins fold. It seems that Alphabet are making small advances in biological science that could really help further this field.
Luke: And not to get stuck on Alphabet, they’ve also got an arm called Verily Life Sciences, which was formerly Google X. Same sort of space, doing research into life sciences and life extension.
Albert: And they have a slightly different goal. Their goal is to digitize healthcare and they’ve been in the news recently. They have a digital platform called Project Baseline to help with clinical studies and they were used to support COVID-19 research efforts last year.
Luke: They’ve got their own platform for management of chronic diseases, Onduo.
Albert: Yeah, Onduo is a platform for personal management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and this sounds very similar to what Teladoc is doing with Livongo.
Luke: I am scratching my head about my Teladoc investment. I’m very bullish on the company, but they seem to be languishing in recent months. It’s definitely one of the poorest-performing stocks in the Telescope investing 2021 model portfolio and in my own portfolio, but we’re planning to stay the course.
Albert: Livongo was a big reason why I invested and I’m willing to give it several years for their business plan to play out. And the fact that Verily has a similar product, it’s kind of validating the market for me, and the market should be big enough to accommodate several winners.
Luke: That whole space is all about proactive health care, trying to identify conditions and help you live a healthy life before some of these conditions kick in and start to potentially damage your life expectancy. I do think that’s the future of healthcare and it’s definitely going to help the elderly too.
Albert: And diseases such as cancer tend to appear in later life, and as people live longer, cancer rates are gradually creeping up as well.
Luke: Yeah, we’ve invested in a couple of companies in the past that do liquid biopsy cancer screening. Companies like Guardant Health, which is in the current model portfolio, and Illumina, which I think we had last year. In doing the research for today’s episode,
I was reading about something called the Galleri blood test, which is being trialled in the US and has just launched a UK trial as well. It’s another liquid biopsy cancer test which detects over 50 types of cancer from a single blood sample. I think the NHS in the UK are gearing up to taking a much more proactive approach with these sorts of conditions, and perhaps this will become part of the standard screening that they offer to all over-50-year-olds one day.
Albert: Another area that could see increasing demand is elective surgeries, things like hip replacements and knee surgeries. And one company in our model portfolio that we’re very bullish on is Intuitive Surgical.
Luke: I’ve been a huge fan of Intuitive for decades now. They’re not really in the hip surgery game, but they are helping physicians provide better health outcomes from surgeries. And with an increasing ageing population, more and more of us are going to want this kind of high-quality health care wherever you are in the world, and some of the remote surgery capabilities created by platforms like Intuitive Surgical are definitely going to be the future.
Proactive health
Albert: So Luke, you mentioned earlier that you’re looking at a few things at improving your own health and prolonging your life. What have you found in your research?
Luke: Yeah, probably three things I’ll call out. I’m planning to go get an elective full-body MRI fairly soon. Just trying to find a provider. And I’m also hoping to get my coronary calcium score assessed. Basically, a couple of proactive scans are going to help me identify if I’ve got any health conditions that I should get ahead of.
This kind of stuff’s probably not for everybody. I think I know myself well enough that if I find something, I’m not going to panic about it and perhaps worry myself to death. Alb, I know you pretty well. These are the kinds of things you probably wouldn’t want to get.
Albert: Yeah, I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. I don’t want a full-body MRI. I’ve read that many people get an MRI and then end up getting an unnecessary surgery. In a full-body MRI, they will always find something, even if it’s something really minor.
Luke: Well, they say know thyself. I think I could live with that kind of information. I just think it’s quite important to be able to assess and measure some of these things. Like what do they say? If you can measure it, you can improve it. I say it half-jokingly, half-seriously, like I would like to live to a thousand. I think knowing things like my coronary calcium score are going to be quite an important metric on trying to get there.
Albert: I think I would prefer something that’s less invasive.
Luke: Well, one thing you could consider then is getting a top-of-the-line health watch, like the Apple Watch 6. Some of the stuff that you can do on your wrist these days is really amazing.
Albert: Actually, I have considered getting an Apple Watch, but I couldn’t really justify it to myself, but what have you read about it?
Luke: The latest models can take an ECG on your wrist, and then you can generate a PDF of that electrocardiogram and send it to your doctor so he can tell you if you’ve got a healthy heart. You can do that multiple times a day. The latest watch could automatically detect a heart arrhythmia and tell you if you’ve got some kind of condition that should be checked out.
Of course, it’s got fitness tracking and all that sort of standard metrics you see on other watches, but they’ve also introduced fall detection. My parents aren’t at the age that they’re falling over randomly just yet, but maybe in the next 10 years, right? So in fact, yesterday I just bought Apple Watch 6s for both my mum and dad.
Albert: Luke, I don’t think your parents will be particularly impressed by the fact that you bought them an Apple Watch because you think they’re going to fall over.
Luke: It’s not about the fall detection, but in later years they’re becoming quite gadget heads. They’re enjoying new technology and I think they’ll get a lot of fun out of their new watches.
Albert: Actually, I remember a few years back Tim Cook said he wanted Apple’s largest contribution to mankind to be in health. And it really does seem that the Apple Watch is just the beginning of Apple’s push into health care and preventative health. Maybe it’s time to finally buy that Apple stock.
Luke: Am I rueing selling my Apple stock in 2017? I was a shareholder for about 10 years. I felt like they’d lost their innovation edge, but they’re definitely leading the way in wearables. There’s nothing similar in the Android ecosystem. The Apple Watch 6, I would love to get for myself. I’m just not willing to let Apple technology darken my door.
Key takeaways
Luke: So, Alb, let’s bring it together for a bit of a wrap-up. What are our key takeaways for today?
Albert: With modern technology, life expectancies are gradually increasing, and also because of societal changes, birth rates are declining. And I think an ageing population is going to be inevitable. At some point in the future, the distribution of people across ages is going to be a lot more even, and possibly lopsided where there are many, many more older people than younger ones.
Luke: I think there’s a responsibility on all of us to look after our own health, and taking small proactive steps today could help you have a longer, healthier life in years to come.
Albert: And in living longer and healthier lives, maybe you should think about how you going to fund that life now. Maybe you should start thinking about investing.
Luke: And perhaps investing in companies that are going to serve an increasingly older population.
Wrap
Albert: And that’s all for this week. Thanks for listening.
Luke: Yeah, it was a bit of a depressing episode perhaps this week, but still it’s a megatrend I’m interested in and perhaps will form part of next year’s model portfolio, but between now and then, if there’s a future topic you’d like us to cover, you can message us on Twitter. I’m @LukeTelescope.
Albert: And I’m @AlbertTelescope, or you can email us at feedback@telescopeinvesting.com.
Luke: If you enjoyed today’s episode, you can find more content at our website, telescopeinvesting.com, where you can leave us a comment or a review.
Albert: And if this is your first time tuning in, perhaps consider subscribing to the website so you’re the first to hear about new articles and episodes as they drop.
Luke: Thanks, Albert.
Albert: Thanks, Luke.
